We are angry at the men and women who accepted the unacceptable and let it happen. We can't undo the past, but we can make sure it doesn't happen again.

Let me amend some wisdom often attributed to 18th century Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke to fit today’s sexual harassment scandals, by adding two words: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men AND WOMEN do nothing.”

In the swirl of revelations about men degrading and diminishing women, the spotlight has recently swung to the news media — most prominently the firing of Charlie Rose, 75. The once highly respected superstar had a host role on CBS This Morning, a correspondent spot on the network's 60 Minutes and an eponymous interview show on PBS. In one fell swoop of a Washington Post story, in which multiple women detailed Rose’s sexual peccadilloes, he was swiftly kicked from his enviable perch.

Earlier that same day, The New York Times suspended one of its star White House correspondents, Glenn Thrush, 50, after Vox revealed several instances of women in their 20s claiming unwanted groping and kissing from Thrush when he was at Politico.

Thrush joined the Times less than a year ago. His suspension might have gotten more attention had it not been eclipsed by Rose, a much bigger media luminary, held in the highest regard imaginable. Rose has apologized for what he has acknowledged was unacceptable behavior toward young women working on The Charlie Rose Show, which he owned. It was distributed by PBS and Bloomberg TV; both organizations have severed ties with Rose.

Eight women — three on the record — told The Post that Rose made unwanted sexual advances from the 1990s to 2011, “including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.”

Rose’s apology comes across a bit clueless; he thought in some cases, he said, that he was pursuing shared feelings. But what I have to wonder about is Rose’s longtime executive producer, Yvette Vega, who knew about his predatory behavior.

Kyle Godfrey-Ryan, a 21-year-old Rose assistant in the mid-2000s, complained to Vega about incidents in which Rose walked around naked in front of her, and would call her late at night to tell her he fantasized about watching her from his bedroom window while she swam naked in his pool.

“I explained (to Vega) how he inappropriately spoke to me during those times,” Godfrey-Ryan told ThePost. “She would just shrug and just say, ‘That’s just Charlie being Charlie.’ ”

Vega, now 52, said in a statement that she regrets not doing more to protect young women working with Rose. “I should have stood up for them,” said Vega, who has worked with Rose since 1991. “I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.”

Former New York Times editor Jill Abramson also wishes she had done more about Mike Oreskes. NPR recently forced out Oreskes, its senior vice president for news, after two women alleged unwanted sexual contact from Oreskes when he was Washington bureau chief for the Times. It later came out that Oreskes exhibited behavior with several female NPR employees that made them uncomfortable due to the power imbalance.

Oreskes was forced to resign a day after The Post broke the Oct. 31 story about him. The piece included an account of Oreskes focusing an unusual amount of attention on a young female news aide, an incident that Abramson had witnessed in the late 1990s.

Now Abramson regrets doing nothing. “If I had to do it again, I would have told him to knock it off,” Abramson, co-author of a book about the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill harassment case, told The Post. “Maybe confronting him would have somehow stopped him from doing it to another woman. … I don’t really feel it was in a gray area in retrospect. I should have stopped him.”

It’s easy to be critical of Vega and Abramson in hindsight and wonder why women in newsroom management didn’t do more. We are all angry at the men — and women — who saw but looked away, who accepted what is not acceptable, and who tacitly let it happen.

We can’t undo the past, only learn from it. My takeaway is that older women working in the media world (who are unlikely to be sexually harassed) have an especially strong responsibility now to watch out for the younger women coming up behind them. Check in with them. Watch how they are treated in meetings. Don’t let them be fooled by misuses of the power imbalance. Guide them. Encourage them. Mentor them.